Binge-r #178: Hunters + Horse Girl
Staying Alive: Logan Lerman (Jonah) and Al Pacino (Meyer) in Hunters
HUNTERS S1
Streaming Service: Amazon Prime Video
Availability: All 10 episodes new streaming
The pulp friction between contradictory elements gives off serious sparks in this wild revenge drama about Jewish vigilantes pursuing covert Nazis through the grime of 1970s New York. Whip pans and lurid angles frame solemn monologues, all-American afternoons descend into urge overkill violence, and a disco fantasy sequence is interrupted by a vision of an Auschwitz inmate. One character describes the Hebrew Bible, the Torah, as “the original comic book”, and that’s indicative of David Weil’s series, which can strain for impact at times – fake grindhouse movie trailers are tired – but nonetheless has a deep sense of Jewish survival against adversity and shared history. Channelling The Boys from Brazil, superhero lore, and Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, the messiness here attains genuine mass.
Jonah Heidelbaum (Logan Lerman) is a smart Jewish-American 19-year-old from a working-class Brooklyn neighbourhood whose protective grandmother, Ruth (Jeannie Berlin), has never discussed how she survived Hitler’s concentration camps. But when she dies her friend and fellow survivor, Meyer Offerman (Al Pacino) inducts the reluctant teenager into Ruth’s secret mission: a group hunting for Wold War II Nazis living – and secretly plotting – in America. “New players, new times,” cautions Meyer, and the series shows America as a ready incubator for the fascists, whose plotting is revealed through multiple characters, including their secret commander (Lena Olin) and a homicidal foot soldier (Greg Austin), whose monologues show how the tenets of anti-Semitism can exist in any situation, or era.
As with The Boys, Amazon’s hit superhero satire from last year [full review here], the scabrous moments kick the door in for sharper commentary. Here the Holocaust is a personal experience, remembered in stories that recreate the cruelty on a deeply personal level, which is instilled into those who somehow lived. “I represent six million clients,” Meyer tolls one unrepentant target, and his certainty is contrasted with Jonah’s self-doubts and missteps even as he falls in with his colourful fellow unofficial vigilantes. Each of the first few episodes has a scene that distils their terrible burden, as well as a take that verges on the terrible, yet Hunters holds together, moving from the comical to the nightmarish with queasy ease. If the world can allow for mass extermination, the show says, then it can certainly handle a B-movie blowout to thrillingly right a few wrongs.
Another Girl, Another Planet: Alison Brie (Sarah) in Horse Girl
NEWLY ADDED MOVIES
HORSE GIRL (Netflix, 2020, 104 minutes): With a sense of dislocation both emotional and physical, this independent American drama is always one movie ahead of the genre you think it is. Carried by a deeply held lead performance from co-writer Alison Brie (Glow, Mad Men), Horse Girl is a mental health thriller when you think it’s an awkward Millennial comedy, and something else again when you begin to see it as a mental health thriller. The way that it changes, both intimate and eerie, makes the confusing compelling, even if the concept ultimately outruns the storytelling that follows. Brie’s Sarah lives an uneventful, withdrawn life perched just above personal turbulence, and when she initially meets Darren (John Reynolds) on an unexpected double date it appears to be a breakthrough, but what ensures quickly changes direction: dissociation, lost time, and paranoid theories bloom. Director and co-writer Jeff Baena (Life After Beth) lets the fractures compound and Brie, who has always played characters operating under contradictory layers, illustrates those fault lines with a timely and immersive portrayal.
New on SBS on Demand: Adding to the theory that the best romantic comedies are now made by independent filmmakers, Rebecca Miller’s Maggie’s Plan (2015, 98 minutes) features Greta Gerwig, Ethan Hawke, and Julianne Moore in an academia-set study of female longing and need that mixes personal turbulence with telling observations; The Breaker Upperers (2018, 90 minutes) is antic Kiwi comedy where love hurts in unexpected ways.
New on Stan: Whit Stillman’s droll, illuminating take on manners and etiquette moves from the 1980s to the 1790s with Love and Friendship (2016, 90 minutes), an enjoyable and astute Jane Austen adaptation starring Kate Beckinsale; David Gordon Green’s melancholic and idiosyncratic comedy Manglehorn (2014, 97 minutes) has a fascinating cast: Al Pacino, Holly Hunter, and Harmony Korine.
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